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Communist System - D GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS – Vol. I - Communist System - D. W. Lovell COMMUNIST SYSTEM D. W. Lovell University of New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia Keywords: Bureaucracy, Civil society, Command economy, Communism, Communist party, Marx, Lenin, Soviet Union, Totalitarianism. Contents 1. Introduction 2. Origins and Early Development 3. The Communist Party 4. Institutional Framework 4.1 The Communist Constitution and its Role 4.2 Levels of Government 4.3 Law 4.4 Elections 4.5 Civil Service 5. The Command Economy 6. The Roles of Coercion, Consent, and Complicity 7. The Collapse of Communism 8. Characterizing the Communist System 9. Conclusions Acknowledgements Bibliography Biographical Sketch Summary The communist system aimed to build a new type of human society, based on solidarity and the fulfillment of people’s needs. The system was under construction in Russia from 1917, reaching stability only in the 1950s. It was adopted in other countries after the Second World War, following the victories of Soviet-inspired or -supported communists, but in most it collapsed near the end of the twentieth century under the combined weight of elite disillusionment and popular discontent. The general shape of the communistUNESCO system owes far more to– the practicalEOLSS exigencies of the first communist state, the national traditions it inherited, and Lenin’s unshakeable belief in the Bolsheviks’ dutySAMPLE to take and keep power, thanCHAPTERS to any theoretical blueprint. The key feature of this system is the directing role of the communist party, and the consequent subordination of all constitutional forms, and all social and economic activity, to the party’s rule. National variations modified this tenet only slightly. The central developments of communist states found their impetus in the communist party. There were, in addition, strong links between the party leader’s personal style and the behavior and policies of communist governments. Decision-making was conducted chiefly within the party, out of public gaze or control. Rule was maintained by a combination of manufactured “consent” based on ideology and outright coercion. Whether it took the form of terror or not, this coercion was essentially arbitrary. By 1989, however, most ©Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS – Vol. I - Communist System - D. W. Lovell communist leaders lacked the conviction to continue coercing their populations, and their rule collapsed. The few remaining communist states tend to rely on determined, but aging, leaders. Communist states have modernized and industrialized their countries, but they have proved unable to innovate or change easily. Launched with great enthusiasm, built on enormous sacrifice, they nevertheless settled into authoritarian routines, which neglected the cost in human suffering. 1. Introduction The “communist system” is the title loosely applied to the political and economic organization of states which share the following general characteristics: they are ruled by a single party; they are formally committed to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism; and a large part (if not all) of their economy is in public hands. This system was eventually established in at least 14 countries around the world, encompassing perhaps one-third of the world’s population at its height. It grew, in large part, from the example—and even under the direction—of the first communist state established in Russia from October 1917 (in the old-style calendar). The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had great influence over later communist states. But the “communist system” is not monolithic. Many communist states have differed, in degree, from the Soviet model; many have differed from each other on a range of issues, even about what “communism” itself means. The shape of the communist system nevertheless owes a substantial debt to the early Soviet history of emergency control and the demands of sheer survival, as well as to the Russian heritage. It is therefore the Soviet model that will provide the signposts for this article. Economically backward, Russia, emerging from the exhaustion of war and from a Tsarist state, based on strict hierarchy and extensive internal surveillance since the time of Peter the Great, was the state in which V. I. Lenin’s Bolshevik Party took power, determined to survive and prosper as a guide for communists everywhere. The first communist state was characterized by centralized power, hierarchy and subordination, and by a system of internal surveillance and coercion nurtured by civil war. It drew to a lesser extent on Marxist ideology, as interpreted by Lenin: an ideology which found political inspiration in the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871, and praised the council—or “soviet”—form as vastly more democratic than the “talking-shop” of parliament, but had almost nothing to say about the details and dangers of political institutions as such. UNESCO – EOLSS Once the communist system was launched, Marx’s theory could provide little guidance to ruling communistSAMPLE parties about the practical CHAPTERS problems of political, or economic, organization. The pronouncements made by Lenin in the first turbulent years of the new communist state were embroidered, as required, by his successors to form a theoretical framework for the new system. One central preoccupation made these adaptable norms seem more like rationalizations: the commitment of the communist party to maintaining itself in power. And one irony stands out from the entire communist experience: a continued theoretical commitment to the “withering away” of the state was matched by the expanding functions and reach of the state such that it eventually encompassed almost every aspect of life. ©Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS – Vol. I - Communist System - D. W. Lovell 2. Origins and Early Development The Soviet system was not created from some blueprint of government; its theoretical inspirers—especially Karl Marx—had excluded such blueprints as unnecessarily limiting options on the future. And it consciously rejected some of the “bourgeois” political forms, such as the rule of law and the separation of powers, as simply disguises for the rule of the capitalist class. Its theoretical guides had nevertheless made some general remarks about how such a system was likely to work: Marx, in discussing the Paris Commune, and Lenin, in his State and Revolution in 1917. Neither anticipated the problems which would face a communist government, either in general, or in a largely peasant country. Both were concerned, instead, with highlighting problems and inequities in the capitalist state, and insisting that it could not serve the purposes of the new, historic ruling class: the proletariat. Furthermore, the communist system was envisaged as a temporary affair, for the explicitly “political” aspects of government were seen as emblematic of the class struggle (which would soon disappear), and the administrative aspects of government were, as Lenin put it, akin to “bookkeeping” which anyone could do. At the beginning of the communist system, therefore, its founders looked forward with optimism to the end of politics: to a society that was orderly without the need for politics, because there were no longer any fundamental conflicts to resolve (see Socialism and Communism). The communist system is relatively successful at imposing order, and indeed puts a priority on it. Having taken power, communists were keen to entrench the rule of their party before they undertook their economic tasks (especially industrialization). This meant the progressive elimination of all rival parties, and then the elimination of dissent within the communist party itself. Continuing discipline was demanded in the enduring struggle against “class enemies” both within and outside the system. By the early 1920s, the model for this top-down party control was complete: the centralized control of all key appointments within party and state; strict party discipline; and party supremacy over state institutions. The Bolsheviks came to power by working through the “soviets”, a popular council structure that sprang up after the demise of Tsarism in the 1917 “February Revolution” and soon rivaled the more traditional Provisional Government. They praised the democratic—that is, diverse—character of the soviets, until they cemented their hold on power. Soon after their revolution, however, they began to outlaw opposition parties includingUNESCO the rival socialist parties. In 1921,– EOLSSthe Red Army put down a rising at the Kronstadt naval base, composed of workers and sailors who had supported the Bolshevik revolutionSAMPLE but maintained that theCHAPTERS soviets must continue to represent all shades of workers’ interests. This pre-history of the USSR (which was formally declared at the beginning of 1924) was a period of consolidation of Communist Party rule (the Bolsheviks took the name “Communist Party” in 1918). The Bolsheviks were adamant that they were the genuine—and thus the only—representative of the historic interests of the working class and of socialism. Whether by luck, good management, audacity, or some combination of these, they had taken the levers of power in Russia, and they believed they had a historical duty not to let them go. The notion of a responsibility to history—rather than to actual workers and peasants—exercised a great ©Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS – Vol. I - Communist System - D.
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